Page 28 of Together Again at the Cornish Country Hospital

‘I hope you get everything sorted.’ Lijah briefly rested a hand on Brenda’s shoulder.

‘Thank you my love and I still think you’re a hero, even if the sight of blood did make you jump like a jack-in-the-box!’ Brenda gave a hearty laugh and when Lijah looked at Amy, he could see the amusement in her eyes too.

‘I’ll come and find you when I can. I don’t think the emergency department is your natural home.’ Amy’s mouth was twitching, as if she was fighting the urge to laugh.

‘Bang goes my idea of becoming a porter then.’ Lijah gave a theatrical sigh. ‘I’ll see you outside when you’re ready. I’ll be on the bench, and I’ve made us lunch.’

‘Perfect.’ Her mouth curved upwards this time and all he could think about was kissing her again.

* * *

Amy was twenty minutes late to meet Lijah and she wasn’t sure whether he’d still be waiting, but he was sitting on the bench where he said he’d be, writing into an A5 hardback notebook. It was like stepping back in time. When they’d first got together, he’d spent lots of time scribbling in notebooks, writing lyrics and making notes of ideas. She’d been fascinated by the way his mind worked and the fact he could create amazing things out of nothing. He’d always had a beautiful face, but he had an even more beautiful mind. She knew that creativity came with a price though, and that he thought more deeply and felt more deeply than most people. There were times when it could torture him, and she could see what his mother’s death had done to him, even from a distance.

Lijah had never spent a lot of time on social media, and he hadn’t posted anything publicly in the time since his mother’s death, but that didn’t stop the press intrusion. She’d seen the photographs of him looking distraught outside his mother’s funeral, when the gutter press had used long range lenses to catch him at his most vulnerable. Then there’d been reports of his performances on the tour he’d embarked on in the wake of her death, his voice breaking in certain songs, and the haunted look that some reports suggested was down to addiction. Amy would have bet all she owned that the haunted look had come from heartbreak, and there’d been so many times she’d thought about reaching out to him. Instead, she’d checked in on him via Claire and had hoped he’d find a way to process his grief, instead of burying it.

‘How’s Brenda?’ When Lijah looked up at Amy, her heart seemed to speed up. After the kiss she’d questioned whether they really could pick up where they’d left off, and a big part of her had really wanted to try. The trouble with Lijah was there was just too much at stake. She couldn’t enjoy a fling with him for whatever it turned out to be, because there were always going to be deep feelings involved when it came to him. If things went any further between them and she let even more of those feelings reignite, it was going to hurt so much when it ended, as it almost certainly would. She just couldn’t risk it, no matter how many memories the kiss had brought back and how attracted she was to Lijah. Within two days of the kiss, she’d decided that going back to keeping him at arms’ length was a far safer bet, but that was much harder to do in person. The draw she felt towards him was almost overpowering, and she sat as far away from him on the bench as it was possible to do.

‘Brenda’s fine. The vein was stitched, it was never going to stop bleeding on its own.’

‘Oh.’ Lijah blanched. ‘I wish visualising that didn’t turn my stomach, but what can I say, I’m a wuss.’

‘Your leap out of the way when the bleeding started did suggest that.’ She grinned, his comment breaking some of the tension that was building up inside her, but when he mirrored her expression her pulse started racing again. This wasn’t good, this wasn’t good at all.

‘I know. I’m pathetic.’ He shrugged, still grinning, and she had to clamp her hand to her side to stop herself from reaching out and touching the dimple that appeared in his left cheek. She’d traced that dimple with her fingertips so many times, when they’d been lying side by side.

Lijah gave a mock sigh. ‘Sadly my complete inability to deal with blood has scuppered my plan to go into portering, so I think it’s going to have to be gardening.’

‘As I recall, you regularly severed the heads of all your mum’s flowers when you mowed the lawn for her. So, I’m not sure that’s for you either.’ Amy lifted her bag on to the bench in the space between them, as if that provided a barrier she wouldn’t be able to cross, no matter how loudly her body screamed at her to do so. She had to listen to her brain and stay where she was.

‘No gardening then either, jeez. Looks like I’m doomed to be a songwriter then.’ He passed her one of the sandwiches, and she took a bite, a memory of one of the most amazing days of her life immediately flooding through her.

‘Is this what I think it is?’

‘What else?’ He smiled that slow smile of his and suddenly she was seventeen again, in the run up to their end of year exams in the first year of sixth form, when the two of them had been at Lijah’s place revising together.

‘As I recall, the first time you made me this sandwich, it was because you had almost no food in the house.’

‘That’s right. Mum and Claire were in Italy, and they’d left me plenty of money to go food shopping, but I’d forgotten to get anything in. It was only after I’d already offered you something to eat that I realised how dire the situation was.’ Lijah shrugged. ‘There I was, desperate to impress you with my culinary skills, and all I had was some bread, half a jar of peanut butter, an apple, and a little bit of cheese. Peanut butter sandwiches seemed far too basic and there wasn’t enough cheese to just use that, so I had to improvise.’

‘Peanut butter, apple and cheese toasties. Who’d have thought that would work, especially cold.’ Heat rose up Amy’s neck at the memory of why they hadn’t eaten the sandwiches when they were hot. She’d been dubious when he’d presented her with his creation all those years ago, but after she’d taken the first bite she’d leaned towards him.

‘It might sound disgusting, but it tastes amazing,’ Their faces had been just inches apart as she spoke. ‘In fact, I’d say it deserves a chef’s kiss.’

‘I’d rather have one of yours.’ Lijah’s voice had been low, and he’d held her gaze. They’d been going out for almost a year by then, and even though they’d kissed hundreds of times, they’d never had sex. Lijah had gone out with other girls before Amy, but when they eventually slept together, it would be the first time for both of them. The fact that they were home alone with no chance of disturbance seemed to heighten the intimacy and suddenly it felt as if the moment might be right. They’d taken their relationship quite slowly and Lijah had never pushed her to take things further, but it was Amy who made the first move in the end, sliding her hand to the button of his jeans.

‘Are you sure?’ He’d checked and double checked as they’d fumbled awkwardly to undress each other, and she’d nodded every time, still leading the way.

‘Are you?’ She’d laughed at the expression on his face when she’d asked him that, and the look in his eyes had told her all she needed to know, even before he’d nodded.

It hadn’t been perfect that first time, there were awkward moments, neither of them having enough expertise to make it seamless, and both nervous that they were doing it right. Yet somehow it had still been amazing. Now sitting here, it was if it had happened only yesterday, instead of what sometimes felt to Amy like another lifetime altogether.

‘I’ll always be glad that I got the chance to let that sandwich get cold.’ Lijah was holding her gaze again, just like he had that day.

‘Me too.’ The urge to kiss him again almost took over, but somehow she stayed rooted to the spot, at her end of the bench.

‘I probably shouldn’t admit this, but these cold toasties are still my go to when I need something to cheer me up, and I’ve been eating a lot of them lately.’

Lijah’s words were a timely reminder of why Amy shouldn’t give in to her feelings. She couldn’t be the human version of his favourite sandwich, there just to cheer him up during a tough time, until he was ready to move on. Getting tangled up in Lijah’s life would be messy. Amy had been the subject of press scrutiny before, when one of their old school friends had sold a story to a journalist about Amy and Lijah’s teenage romance. The article had made much of the fact that some of Lijah’s songs had almost certainly been written about Amy, whose picture had been positioned side by side with Lijah’s latest girlfriend. It was a comparison Amy didn’t want or need, and she’d hated every moment of the attention it had generated. She wasn’t going to go through all of that again for something that had even less chance of working now than it had before. But every time she looked at Lijah, all of the sensible advice she’d been giving herself seemed to fall out of her head. The best thing she could do was help him realise that Port Kara didn’t hold the answers, in the hope he’d leave before she did something really stupid. She had to remind him where he really belonged.

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